A game taxonomy, part 1
A million people have already done this - I'm kind of assuming you have vaguely absorbed the existing Internet discussions, and are familiar with terms like OSR, Story Games, etc. If you haven't, run away now and save yourself. But Six Cultures Of Play is probably a prerequisite to understand what I'm talking about, or at least what I'm complaining about.
I will try to, as much as possible, only discuss games that I have played. A lot of taxonomies seem to be written by someone who clearly likes one type of game a lot more than the others. For instance, I will not be discussing LARP because I don't have any relevant experience. I'm also not claiming that I am discussing the complete set of all games that exist, but I think I have played enough of them propose a taxonomy. If you're curious, I have an approximately complete list of games I've played or run here.
What is a TTRPG?
First we're going to have to look at everyone's other least favourite subject of conversation.
TTRPGs have 2 or more people taking on the following 3 roles:
- A player, who is responsible for one or more characters who are the protagonists of the story.
- A GM, who is responsible for the remainder of the story, such as providing additional characters and other aspects of the environment that the main players exist in. To do so they might determine the outcome of uncertain events or interpret rules agreed upon by the table.
- An author, who provides additional, reusable material without being present. I'm using the term "author" for a lack of a better one, but it includes game books, blog posts, maps, drawings, or even fixed principles transmitted orally from game group to game group. These serve to facilitate or even replace GMing, as well as to introduce new ideas to the table without someone being physically present.
The same person often takes on different roles at different times, sometimes in the same game.
If you have only one of these roles, you are probably writing a book, doing improv, or some other activity. Which is of course totally fine.
This isn't the only definion you could come up with, but I think most people would agree it isn't totally wrong, and it's a lens that I'll be using to discuss the game taxonomy.
The actual taxonomy
In this blog post, I'll talk about 4 categories at a high level, and how they relate to each other. In a follow up blog post, if I ever finish it, I'll break them down into subcategories, many with a lot of overlap.
Maximalist Games
Apparently "maximalist" means something specific in art but I am not educated in such things and might be using the word wrong.
Characteristics of a maximalist game:
- The three roles: clearly present and distinct, with the GM and author each taking on a large responsibility for the game experience.
- Modularity: Semi-modular: There is a main game system which is designed to be extended by other modules, but these modules cannot be used with other games easily. A game book is typically not a self-contained experience and games are usually open-ended in duration.
- Rules: A lengthy, complex ruleset with subsystems for resolving different parts of the game that are likely to come up, primarily oriented around the success or failure of an action and its consequences.
- Characters: The complex game mechanics provide an opportunity for players to develop a distinct character before playing them, defined by game mechanics. Character and player motivations are usually aligned.
- Narrative structure: Campaigns usually follow conventional narrative structure, but this is driven primarily by the GM, or by adventure modules, which define an outline of the narrative.
- Who makes them: Often require more resources to create and thus are made by corporations, but that is changing.
- Relationship to other media: While often inspired by fantasy novels, their larger budget and longer history has allowed some of them to develop their own genre conventions distinct from other media, and in some cases have inspired movies and books.
- Solo games: Rare, due to the prominent role of the GM.
"Trad" games are a subset of these but a) I hate that word and b) I think the genre, starting especially with 4E and other inspired games, have gone in some very different directions. It roughly corresponds to "Fight D&D" in the Between Two Cairns taxonomy, but some games in this category involve no fighting at all.
Narrative Mechanics Games
- The three roles: Blur the lines between GM and player more freely.
- Modularity: Usually not very. Each game is made to create a specific experience, and the blurring of GM and player roles makes adding external content more complicated.
- Rules: Focused on resolving problems in the context of narrative structures. Rules may facilitate pacing, allow for storytelling outside of linear time, allow players to temporarily take on a GM-like role, and allow for players to work together to create conflict between their characters.
- Characters: Mechanics facilitate creating characters according to genre conventions with defined relationships to other characters and to NPCs. Player and character motivations are often not aligned.
- Narrative structure: Rules are designed to support conventional narrative structures and genre conventions.
- Who makes them: The focused scope of these games mean that they are often made by individuals rather than corporations, but there is a trend towards some of them being made by mid-sized organizations. Long development cycles may be needed to provide a polished experience, leading to some amount of professionalization.
- Relationship to other media: Usually strongly inspired by other media, allowing you to create stories similar to movies, books, TV shows, etc.
- Solo games: Rare, with Ironsworn as a notable exception.
Some "story games" fall into this, but I think "story games" has split into two meaningfully distinct categories. I've met enough people who only like one of the two categories. I think they are perceived as more similar than they are because there's less internet drama about the difference between them.
Prompt-based storytelling
- The three roles: Blur the lines between the GM, player and author, with the GM often being absent.
- Modularity: Usually self-contained experiences with limited modularity.
- Rules: Often entirely forego mechanics for failure or success; mechanics tend to be minimal and about making suggestions regarding the story to tell, with the written text sometimes acting primarily as a GM or even player who is not present.
- Characters: Character creation is usually a minor to nonexistent part of the game, with characters being defined by decisions made at the table. In some cases, all characters are already predefined. Characters are usually defined in words rather than numbers. Player and character motivations are rarely aligned.
- Narrative structure: Stories often forego conventional narrative structures, and are focused around exploring relationships, ideas, or experiences. If a narrative structure is defined, it is usually in the form of a defined endpoint, with the purpose of the game being to explore how the characters get there.
- Who makes them: Leans heavily towards DIY or single creators. Often comes in formats other than books.
- Relationship to other media: Inspiration comes less from established genres and more from life experiences. Genre fiction is less likely to be an inspiration.
- Solo games: Very common, due to the reduced role of the GM.
Adventure/exploration games
- The three roles: Blur the lines between GM and author, both at the table and culturally.
- Modularity: Are highly modular: not only are supplements and adventures often interchangeable, but are often not tied to specific systems.
- Rules: Have relatively short rulesets focused on generating situations (on the GM side) and resolving danger (on the player side).
- Characters: Characters are mostly created organically in play through interactions with the environment, including the tools at their disposal. Random generation is common. Character and player motivations are usually aligned.
- Narrative structure: Campaigns often do not follow a typical narrative structure, aside from perhaps an escalation in danger, scope and/or strangeness.
- Who makes them: Their modular nature means that they are often created in a DIY manner, through zines, blog posts, and informal discussions, though mid-size companies are also prevalent.
- Relationship to other media: Inspiration from other media is often mostly vibes-based, with genre fiction, folklore, and even musical genres and political movements (for better or worse) being prominent. It doesn't seek to emulate the characters or narrative structure of other genres.
- Solo games: Relatively common, usually provided by an additional module that may be specific and general-purpose, often focused on a GM emulator known as an "oracle."
"OSR" games are a subset of these, but a good number of these also make many OSR people very angry. It roughly corresponds to "Door D&D", but dungeon crawling is not inherent to this genre.
Other ways of looking at these categories
You could also map these on axes:
- distinct GM/player/writer role vs combined roles: maximalist vs prompt-based at opposite ends of this spectrum
- Highly self-contained vs highly modular: narrative vs adventure/exploration
- Strong genre conventions vs naturalistic approach: maximalist/narrative vs adventure/exploration/prompt based
- Resembles a D&D vs does not really resemble a D&D: maximalist/adventure/exploration vs narrative/prompt based
- for symmetry I want to put another axis for maximalist/prompt based but I can't think of anything they have in common. Oh well.
But I also don't think this is a complete enumeration of all possible types of games either - this is some kind of n-dimensional space that has only 4 blobs on it
The part of the taxonomy blog post where you realize this is actually just me going on about my own preferences this entire time
I've played and enjoyed all 4 types of games, but putting this together has helped me figure something out - why it is that I like both the NSR side of OSR games and like the "super weird" story games. And why I don't seem to be the only one, even though these are often talked about as opposites. Because if you split story games into two genres, the similarities between prompt-based games and adventure/exploration games comes out.
Previous posts
I made a previous post arguing there's a lot of overlap between modern trends in some OSR games and in some story games, here: I realize now I was actually describing the section between adventure/exploration games and prompt based games. It all makes sense with the circle.
I have another post where I discuss the overlap specifically from the perspective of solo games.
I attempted to come up with my own definition for NSR here.